


Merchandising

by aphelion_orion



Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Future Fic, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphelion_orion/pseuds/aphelion_orion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ky discovers, much to his dismay, that he really is the world's first post-apocalyptic pop idol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merchandising

**Author's Note:**

> Set at some unknown point in the future. Sin's in there because I like Sin. Not Overture-compliant because why.

The blue was quite eye-catching.  
  
Someone had most likely tweaked the colors during development, because it practically glowed, two bright, intense irises offset by skin so pale it was almost white. The quality had suffered from the extreme close-up, of course, the edges fuzzy, the eyelashes and brows a blur. Wherever it had come from, whoever had taken it, it couldn't have been more than a snapshot, a fleeting moment caught on camera while the subject was unaware.  
  
A glance at the next page confirmed this impression. The close-up had been replaced by what seemed to be the original, the same intense gaze now set into a face that was less pale, its owner leaning against a crumbling, moss-covered wall and staring out into the distance at something only he could see. The sword was propped across his lap, half-covered by the spread of a map, tattered and riddled with markings. It was hard to tell whether he was more inclined to smile or frown, his features neutral and paying the camera no mind. To the casual observer, he might have looked like he was contemplating something important, staring with determination at the things to come, but Ky was pretty sure he had just been tired.  
  
A quick look through the rest of the pages yielded similar results and similar gazes. The only things that changed were the location — once an ivy-framed window, once next to a horse almost twice his size, once in a cathedral, but mostly varying shades of battlefield — and the outfit, clean white changing into crusty red and brown, once a shot in formal wear, once with the coat off, but every picture had been taken when he wasn't paying attention, wearing the same distant expression.  
  
Shaking his head, Ky placed the calendar back on the bookwheel, noting with a measure of dismay that it seemed to be the only one left.  
  
"Hey, will you look at that. Snowglobes!"  
  
Across the aisle, Sol was moving along the shelves, picking up the small domes and shaking them until the flakes were swirling wildly around the tiny Kys with their rosy cheeks and angel wings.  
  
The real Ky rolled his eyes. "Kliff sent me one of those for my birthday last year. He thought it was hilarious."  
  
Sol had already abandoned the snowy mayhem for the next row of trinkets, pulling a cork from a blossom-shaped bottle and wrinkling his nose when a fragrant cloud of lily of the valley escaped into the stuffy shop air. "They really think you bathe in this, you know. And how come I never heard about that present?"  
  
"Because I happen to value my dignity," Ky replied, still grappling with the realization that there seemed to be precious little room for dignity in this place.  
  
"Could've sent you one of these," Sol said, reaching out to send a rack of t-shirts whirling, all of them, Ky was sure, badly emblazoned with his picture.  
  
"I can't believe anyone would wear that. Is that... are those _sparkles_?"  
  
"Whatever happened to 'I can't believe anyone would make that'?" Sol asked, his tone practically oozing smugness. "There's a rose petal version over there. Midriff cut."  
  
"Thanks for painting that picture for me," Ky said, casting his eyes about for something relatively innocuous and settling on a row of glass and porcelain figurines. All of a predictable subject, but he could admit that the poses were at least aesthetically pleasing, even if the constant wing attachments were starting to get on his nerves. He reached out to pick one up and look for the craftsman's insignia, and quickly withdrew his hand when he realized that tasteful pose or no, the him reclining against the broken cross base and cradling the Furaiken was wearing only a flowing swath of cloth that looped suggestively around his hips and thighs.  
  
Sol had caught up with him and gave a low whistle. "Gotta admit, someone had a lot of imagination right there."  
  
Ky closed his eyes, counted silently to three, and moved to pick a slightly less overdone representation of himself seated atop a war horse. He ran a finger along the reins, moving the little gold-thread tassels and admiring the graceful slant of the animal's neck, the arc of its legs, and—  
  
"Pink?"  
  
Sol looked up from his perusal of a set of silver coins nestled in velvet, each of them stenciled with Ky's profile, and smirked. "Brings back memories, doesn't it?"  
  
Ky glared. "For the record, I always knew what happened to my uniform was your fault, and my original point still stands. Pink."  
  
"Heh, I'm pretty sure that stunt's just an urban legend by now. Thing's one of those weather blings. Pink is sunny, blue is rain."  
  
"I'm a mantelpiece ornament that predicts the weather," Ky said slowly.  
  
"Yeah, pretty much."  
  
They passed through an intersection devoted entirely to candy, mercifully generic sweets mingling with Furaiken candy canes, sugar-encrusted flower petals, relic bottles filled with colored 'holy water,' and a rather impressive two-story creation of a pile of marzipan Gears, with a haloed fondant him sitting innocently on top. Sol quirked an eyebrow in passing, and pulled out a bag taped shut with a cross-shaped seal.  
  
"Ky Kiske Commemorative Licorice?"  
  
"...I don't even like licorice."  
  
"Better make sure they're donating at least half their earnings to orphans or something," Sol said. "I'd suggest charging royalties, but we both know you're too much of a bleeding heart to even try."  
  
"Ow," said a small alcove to the left filled with replicas of Order uniforms, thereby relieving Ky of further comment. "These costumes are murder."  
  
"That's what everyone said," Sol remarked, his attention now on a jar of pens. He extricated one from the middle, examining the see-through half with the little figurine floating in liquid and tilted it in the opposite direction. "Oh, hey. The little you's clothes come off."  
  
"Stun Edge travels ten meters in 0.02 seconds," Ky said succinctly, and turned his attention back to the dangerously swaying alcove.  
  
The rows of coats parted, Sin stumbling out backwards, clad in a uniform cut for someone with a bigger build. He turned in a circle, noticed he had his parents' full attention, and snapped a passable approximation of a salute. "I still don't get what this flap does. And that belt at the back connects to nowhere. And I don't know if you put on your gloves before you put on the coat or afterwards. And—"  
  
"Everybody in the army managed just fine," Ky said, reaching out to straighten his son's collar. "Though I don't know what that belt was for, either."  
  
"Nobody knew what that belt was for, but I hear it sure found its uses," Sol interjected, still busy with tilting the pen up and down.  
  
Sin blinked, latched the glove straps in place, and struck a pose. "I guess it's easy to move in, at least. Could use more air. I bet the girl uniforms are nicer."  
  
"There were no girl uniforms," Ky said, smiling involuntarily at the memory of some of the more fashion-conscious members of the army. He'd once run into a soldier sewing ribbons and beads to the sleeves of her uniform, and there had been the guy who had managed to turn his unrivaled bottle cap collection into a bizarre kind of sash that he'd refused to take off, even for sleeping.   
  
"Well, there should've been," Sin insisted in the manner of grand vision only gifted to well-he-looks-about-fifteen-years-old-now boys, before examining his own getup again. "If someone needs me, I'm gonna go find a mirror."

Ky watched him parade into the next section, and shook his head. "To think, now it's a costume."

Sol had strolled further in and was rifling through a bunch of paper rolls. "When he says he's gonna go find a mirror, he really means he's gonna go hit on the girl out front, you know."

"Wasn't it you who said I'm taking everything too seriously?" Ky pointed out. "He knows how to mind his manners."

"It's the minding his manners part that I'm worried about," Sol said, grimacing when the inevitable perfectly intoned "Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle" came floating down the aisle, followed by a high-pitched giggle. He unraveled one of the paper rolls, and snorted. "Oh look, it's the recruitment stuff. Man, you used to make for a girly kid. No wonder people got confused."

"I told you I don't need to know— are those _breasts_?!"

Sol paused, held the poster away from his body, and stared. "Huh. What do you know. So they are. Either the PR guys were confused, too, or we've found the pin-ups."

"...please stop ogling the breasts I don't have," Ky sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And for the record, I never thought I'd have to say that."

"You might not wanna walk down that section, then," Sol said, in no way inclined to actually follow the request. "'s where they keep the body pillows and the dress-up kits."

"Body... pillows? ...Nevermind. I don't want to know."

"Just be glad the Internet is dead." Sol mercifully rolled the poster back up and tossed it into the darkness of the shelf. "It could be so much worse."

"I'm going to regret asking, but what is the Internet and how could it possibly be any worse than this?"

When Sol merely grinned and opened his mouth to answer, though, he quickly held up his hand. "...On second thought, I think my life will be much happier and fulfilled without that knowledge. I can't believe this kind of thing used to be normal in your world."

They turned down a new aisle, this one stocked to the ceiling with stuffed toys, bobblehead dolls, and toy swords. At least, this part of the shop seemed to be a little more diverse, even if it was trying to sell soft, colorful plush versions of things Ky was pretty sure had been well over ten feet tall and equipped with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

"This is so very wrong," Sol remarked, picking up a fuzzy mini-Justice and glaring at it. "I get the post-apocalyptic pop idol crap, but _this_..."

Ky shrugged, well on his way to recovering his equilibrium now that it was starting to look like the crazed toy makers of the world hadn't decided to focus solely on him. He poked through the shelves, found a Kliff plushie dwarfed by its puffy plush sword, and couldn't help the twitch of his lips. "If I have to put up with seeing my face on t-shirts, the archnemesis of the world can put up with being a really adorable kid's toy."

Sol glared. "Don't call her adorable."

"It's just the big soulful eyes," Ky assured him. He slipped past a spinning rack full of Furaiken key-chains, skimming the shelves beyond. "It's too bad they probably don't have a—"

"Don't have a what?"

But Ky didn't answer, entirely preoccupied with pushing aside a pile of squishy caterpillar Gears, because from the depths of the display, a pair of fierce red felt eyes was glaring out at him.

* * *

  
"I can't believe you bought it."

They were walking down the main street, Sin obliviously munching on a bag of free candy (Commemorative Sacred Hearts with peach flavor and extra sugar) and entirely too pleased with his loot — a business card with the shop's name and address written on it, and the hastily scrawled name of the assistant girl on the back.

Sol, for his part, hadn't followed through on his threats of setting the contents of Ky's bag on fire, but seemed intent on spending the rest of the walk in a staring contest with the plushie that was peering over the paper rim, looking pissed at the world.

"Of course I bought it," Ky said, his smile threatening to widen into a full-blown grin. "Turnabout's fair play in my book."

"I don't see why you need that when you're already using me for a pillow."

"It's cute."

"You're not taking it to bed with you."

"Hmm. Never bring up the pin-ups again and we have a deal."

Sol favored the plush doll with a last baleful look, which it heartily returned from underneath the mess of brown felt on its head. "...Deal."

 

 

 

-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me where they got the photos for that calendar. Maybe some enterprising Zeppians helped.


End file.
